[onelifecrisis]

OK, since this thread started I've been trying to take note of the things I do to increase "realism". These have become so automatic to me that I couldn't think of them off the top of my head. Anyway, I reckon I've got most of them now, so to anyone who is interested I've listed them. Most of these, I read about here at subsim.

• I set "Maximum TC" to 256. As has already been noted, high TC all but removes the possibility of air attacks.
• I set "When Hunting TC" to 256. If you have this set lower than your Maximum TC it can be a give away. For example, if it were set at 32 (the default) then when a ship is spotted I will know whether or not it is an enemy ship, even from 16km, just by trying to go high on the TC while shadowing it. Setting this TC the same as the max TC forces me to check the flag.
• I never stop submerged. Maintaining a constant depth in a U-boat that wasn't moving was barely possible, and trying it made a lot of noise IRL. SH3 doesn't model this noise, so I always keep my U-boat moving at least a little bit. Sitting perfectly still at PD (or any depth) is effectively cheating in SH3.
• I never ping for depth when enemies are around. IRL, pinging the sea floor while escorts are around would have alerted all nearby escorts to your presence, but SH3 doesn't model this. You can ping and they don't hear it. Edited 7th July 2008: I was wrong about this, SH3 does model it, and pinging for depth can result in detection! I therefore don't allow myself to ping for depth when enemy ships are around, I just use the depth thing on the navmap. Sometimes, in waters 100-200m depth (I never go into very shallow waters) I have hit the bottom while trying to put a few extra meters between me and the DD's that are hunting me. I really like this touch! The "Can I, can't I?" question of whether to try for those extra few meters, with the sound of DD's going Ping! above you, can be pretty cool.
• I always let the crew fire the guns. The reasons for this are obvious I think.
• I always follow my orders. If BdU tell me to go to grid AM11, it doesn't seem realistic to me that I ignore them and go to DH53.
• I play DiD (Dead is Dead). This stops me from getting silly ideas like fighting escorts or raiding ports. If you try this, I strongly recommend setting "When being hunted TC" to 1 because the seconds/minutes gained by having TC automatically dropped to 1 when you're attacked can make all the difference. The downside is that DC attacks have to be played out in realtime if the escorts manage to detect me, but even that cloud has a silver lining: it's a little extra incentive to try to make sure I don't get detected at all.